


A sort of...compassion

by Lilliburlero



Series: Short & Crowded [2]
Category: King Rat - James Clavell, The Marlows - Antonia Forest
Genre: Bisexual Character, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Transphobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-03-10 13:56:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13502945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: A brief POV switch on the relationship between Jon Marlow and Peter Marlowe in 'Scenes from the Short and Crowded Life...'





	A sort of...compassion

Peter Marlowe didn't remember the moment he had identified exactly what it was he felt about his namesake, and despite it being impertinently the wrong way about in terms of both age and rank, he always thought, and was consequently careful never to say, _namesake_. Perhaps there had not been a moment, merely a slow-growing recognition ending in the ejaculation, safely roared into engine noise, _why can't I just be fucking normal?_

Because when it had been normal―or common, at least―he hadn't felt it. The tone of his school had been pure; the boys drilled by day and watched by night. His house was the purest of the lot, with a curious air of having something to prove. It took Peter until he was in the Fifth to piece together why that was, by which time it was at last starting to dissipate. But he had never even gone in for hero-worship; not really. He had admired people, in particular the boy who as Head of House presided over that relaxation of mores. By the time the older boy departed for Oxford Peter considered him a friend, even though the sum of their correspondence since had been two six-page letters on Peter's part and a postcard (quite densely written) of an 18th century engraving of Hereford cathedral on the other's. He had been, Peter thought disinterestedly, bloody good-looking to boot. A lank, fair string bean prone to pustular outbreaks on his neck, Peter had envied no end his compact musculature, bright chestnut hair and clear skin. But he had not desired it.

It was invariably fervid, womanly, cocooning forms that he conjured to toss off to, while certain actual girls made liquid fire course and flare under his skin. He took one of them to bed the last weekend of his leave before he was posted to Hornchurch. Though neither of them said anything, he supposed that they were privately engaged; it would be pretty swinish of him not to suppose it, anyway. Another, whom he thought he perhaps liked better because more intelligent, wrote witty budgets to him twice a week, but she was still that sexless, unassailable thing, a schoolgirl. And then he met F/L Marlow, whose brown, pitted, prognathous face he liked instantly and vividly. Marlow's presence made his mouth fill with spit and his scalp prickle, but every distinction and every similarity between them precluded Peter's seeing what that meant. 

The moment, however, when he realised that not only was the attraction mutual, but it was to be acted upon, and more or less immediately, he would never forget. And, looking back on it years later, he conceded that his unconditional surrender to Jon Marlow might have had a rather larger and more destructive impact on his subsequent conduct―Sean could not have been _helped_ , perhaps, but might have been _loved_ , loved uncomplicatedly and generously as Peter had so signally failed to do―than he would have liked or was prepared to admit.


End file.
